Abstract

Upper limits on the masses of stars that can form are reexamined and
models for the inflow of matter through cocoons around stars of 60, 100,
and 200 solar masses are calculated. Consideration is given to the
general conditions that must hold at the inner and outer boundaries of a
protostellar cocoon; limits on the dust-to-gas ratios and mass inflow
rates that will permit inflow onto very massive stars are determined. It
is found that inflow can occur if intermediate-sized grains (0.05-0.25
micron) are missing from the initial gas/dust mixture. The existence of
massive stars in certain locations in galaxies indicates that
preconditioning of the interstellar medium by shocks or turbulence is
necessary for massive star formation.

Printing Options

Print whole paper
Print Page(s) through

Return 600 dpi PDF to Acrobat/Browser. Different resolutions (200 or 600 dpi),
formats (Postscript, PDF, etc), page sizes
(US Letter, European A4, etc), and compression (gzip,compress,none)
can be set through the
Printing Preferences